What a hoarding cleanup costs in Atlanta

The short answer

Hoarding cleanups are priced by truckload, because there is no other honest way to do it.

A single heavily packed room is often a full truck on its own. A whole house is typically three to six loads, sometimes more if there is a basement. The rate per load does not change as the job goes on, and disposal is included in every load.

The important part: the price is agreed load by load, in advance. You are never in the position of having a house half-emptied and a new number appearing.

How we handle it

This is somebody's home and usually somebody's hardest week. A few things we do as standard:

• Discreet arrival. No announcement, no logo shouting down the street. In a tight intown block in Kirkwood or Grant Park where everyone knows everyone, that matters.
• Nothing goes without a yes. The crew works to what the family or the resident has agreed. Items get set aside for review, not decided at speed.
• We look for the things that get lost. Cash, documents, photographs, jewellery, medication. They turn up in hoarding jobs constantly, usually inside something nobody expected.
• Pace. Multi-day is normal. Trying to do a house in one push usually goes badly for everyone involved.

What makes these jobs harder in Atlanta

The lower level. Because of the Piedmont terrain, so much of the housing stock here has a basement or a daylight basement — ranches across Brookhaven, Tucker, North Druid Hills, Sandy Springs and Decatur, split-foyers through Chamblee and Doraville. In a hoarding situation that space is almost always the worst of it and the last thing anyone opens.

Moisture. This is the part that changes the job. Humid subtropical summers plus an unconditioned or partially conditioned basement means cardboard collapses, paper mats together, fabric mildews and particleboard swells. Material that would be sorted in a drier city is straight disposal here, and it is heavier than it looks because it is holding water.

The driveway. Steep, short, angled drives are the norm intown and across DeKalb. A box truck often cannot back close to the door, so every load crosses more ground. It is priced in, but it is why these jobs take the days they take.

The carport. Overflow in Atlanta goes to the carport, and a carport is open weather. Whatever is out there has been through several Georgia summers.

Estimating the number of loads

Rough guidance from jobs in this metro, so you can budget:

• One packed room, path-only access. Often a full truck, $732.
• A one-bedroom condo. Usually two loads. Two full trucks: $732 + $732 = $1,464.
• A two- or three-bedroom house, no basement. Commonly three to four loads.
• A ranch with a full basement or an under-house garage. Five or more loads is normal, and the basement alone is often two of them.

Photos help enormously. Send them before booking and the load estimate gets much closer, which means the budget conversation happens once rather than three times.

The big items inside

Even in a volume job, some things are worth flagging because they need planning rather than just hands:

A disconnected refrigerator or chest freezer that has been closed for a long time is the one to tell us about before the day. It gets handled sealed rather than opened in the house.

What is outside our scope

Being straight about the boundaries:

• Biohazard remediation — human or animal waste in quantity, sharps, mold remediation as a structural problem — is specialist work and needs a licensed remediation company. We will tell you honestly if that is what you are looking at rather than start and stop.
• Paint, solvents, pesticides and automotive fluids are household hazardous waste and do not go on a standard truck. Metro counties run collection events; check what yours currently offers.
• Pest infestation should be treated before or alongside, not after.

Where remediation is needed, the sequence is usually: bulk removal first, remediation second, final clear third.

When there is a deadline

A lot of these calls come with a date attached — a code enforcement notice, a closing, an executor's timeline, a family member moving into care, a landlord recovering a unit.

If there is a date, say so at booking. Multi-day schedules get built backwards from the deadline, and crew size scales to it. The arrival window is fixed each day, which matters when a crew is crossing the metro on I-285 or I-20 and you are coordinating a family member being elsewhere that morning.

Booking it

Send photos, describe the property and say whether there is a basement, a garage or a carport. You will get a load estimate and a per-load price in advance. Nothing moves until that is agreed, and the rate holds for the whole job.

We work the whole metro for these — intown, inside the Perimeter, and out through Marietta, Smyrna, Tucker, Stone Mountain, Duluth, Alpharetta, Douglasville and the south-side cities.

Frequently asked questions